This is the story of one skeptic’s experience in the Landmark Forum. The story is intended to be of benefit primarily to those who are interested in the Forum and would like to know what the experience was like for one particular participant: me. My experiences are not representative of other people’s experience, but simply my own. There are many other websites out there that include articles and information on the experiences that others who attended the Forum have had.
Information about the Forum is not easy to come by. The Forum is the successor to the Erhard Seminar Training (popularly known as “est”) that began in 1971 and continued through 1984. The Erhard Seminar Training was developed by Werner Erhard (born Jack Rosenberg). The est training was very controversial in its day, and Erhard made some powerful enemies. He was investigated for tax fraud by the Internal Revenue Service in a case that he eventually won, and more significantly, he was accused of sexual abuse by one of his daughters. That accusation was later recanted. He was also the target of investigations by the Church of Scientology, who collected “filing cabinets” worth of material on him to be used in a media blitz to discredit him, as the hierarchy of the church apparently saw him as a rival and believed that he had “stolen” some of their ideas. Erhard was involved in other litigation as well, including cases where he attempted to prove that he had been slandered by various news sources. In any case, after his brother, Harry Rosenberg, and others, purchased his intellectual property and formed Landmark Education, it appears that they have tried to keep a much lower public profile in order to avoid being the target of the same kind of campaign that Erhard found himself the subject of.
In fact, Landmark keeps such a low profile that there is no biography of CEO Harry Rosenberg available on its website, or even an entry for him in Wikipedia. Even so, the occasional magazine article does come out relative to some journalist’s experience at the Forum, which can cause the disapprobation of the Forum’s leadership and legal team. Landmark is also known to be aggressively litigious, and has sued various magazines for slander. So, to be clear, this is an opinion piece. It simply represents my experience at the Forum. In addition, the news isn’t all bad: my opinion is decidedly bifurcated, as there were things about the experience that I liked and things that I didn’t like.
I went to the Forum with my former partner in September of 2004. She had previously done the “est” training about 20 years ago and found it to be a worthwhile experience. What convinced me to try the Forum is a conversation with a couple, both professional psychologists, who were the friends and employers of my former partner. These were people that I trusted and respected. They didn’t tell me I “had” to go to the Forum, just that “there might be some things available for me” there. Before committing to try the Forum, I tried to educate myself a little bit. Since there was a paucity of materials relative to the Forum or Landmark Education, I turned to its predecessor, est and Werner Erhard. So, I read two books on Erhard, including William Warren Bartley’s 1978 biography, “Werner Erhard: the Transformation of a Man, the Founding of est,” and Jane Self’s 1992 book, “60 Minutes and the Assassination of Werner Erhard: How America’s Top Rated Television Show Was Used in an Attempt to Destroy a Man Who Was Making a Difference.” (The title of that one speaks for itself.) What those two books convinced me of is that Erhard is without a doubt a fascinating man who integrated many different resources into what became the “est” training. He also wasn’t half bad at marketing.
Before I went, I attended a “Special Evening,” an event specifically designed for potential Forum attendees. One normally attends at the invitation (and in the company) of someone who has already graduated from the Forum. At this evening, one of the things that happens is that Forum graduates get up and tell stories about their involvement with Landmark and how the experience has changed them. These are essentially “in person” testimonials. I have to say, I was very impressed by the people who get up and what they have to say. There was, for example, a reclusive artist who “got back” her family and allowed herself to become an exhibiting artist. There was a man who talked to his incarcerated father for the first time in a dozen years; a woman whose marriage was on the verge of a breakup until she realized that she had made her husband “small” throughout her marriage; there was a woman who got up and said that she had been released from anxiety and just felt much more “peaceful” than she ever had before; there was another woman who told us that she had a huge release of muscle tension in her hips and lower back after years of going to various kinds of alternative healers for her back pain, without any previous success.
After I came back from the Forum I did some additional research, most of it related to the experience of other people who had taken the est training. That included buying and reading Carl Fredrick’s “est: Playing the Game the New Way” and Adelaide Bry’s “est: 60 Hours that Transform your Life.” The first book wasn’t useful at all, but the second one was definitely instructive, both in reinforcing some of the messages from the training, but also in pointing out some of the ways that est has changed in the years of its evolution from what Erhard created to what is now the Forum. Finally, I also purchased Landmark’s “The Relationship Course” because I was curious as to what Landmark had to teach about relationships.
The original course, the “est Standard Training,” was an intensive two-weekend 60 hour course that promised nothing less than to “transform one’s ability to experience living.” The course was, according to one commentator, a “hodgepodge of philosophical bits and pieces culled from existential philosophy, motivational psychology, Maxwell Maltz’s psycho-cybernetics, Zen Buddhism, Alan Watts, Freud, Abraham Maslow, Hinduism, Dale Carnegie, and Norman Vincent Peale.” It was famous for its long hours, lack of bathroom breaks, and the abusive way in which trainers often treated the customers. In 1984 Erhard sold the company to a group led by his brother, Harry Rosenberg, which eventually became incorporated as Landmark Education. By the time I attended the program with my former partner in 2004, the program had been reduced to 40 hours over one three-day weekend, plus an evening session tacked on. The program had also been refined; bathroom breaks were no longer restricted; trainers were no longer abusive (albeit occasionally still very challenging); but the essential elements of the program were still intact. (My partner had attended one of the original est trainings, so she was in a position to compare.)
But enough with the preliminaries: let’s talk about the experience itself. Our seminar was held in downtown Quincy, Massachusetts in a rather charmless and nondescript conference room in a building owned by Landmark Education. The seminar included about 100 people. Training occurred on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, plus a “graduation” on the subsequent Tuesday evening. The training day was very long – starting at 9:00 in the morning and not finishing until somewhere between 10:30 and 11:30 at night. The schedule included two 30 minute meal breaks at around 11:30 a.m. and 3:00 p.m., and one 90 minute dinner break usually around 6:00 p.m. There was no time to rest or relax, as seminar participants had assignments during all these breaks that keep them busy.
What the Forum promises is not just “change” but “transformation,” as well as a “new realm of possibility.” What it actually delivers is a curriculum that may leave some people feeling transformed, some confused, and will simply provide them with additional tools and techniques for living their lives more fully. That result should not be trivialized; while it may not be the Utopian promise that the Forum makes, it can still be well worth the $395 price of the introductory course for many of the untransformed.
The vocabulary used at the Forum is very specific, and there are a number of terms that take on a very specific meaning, different from ordinary usage. This is expressly acknowledged on the Forum website itself. Some of these specific terms include words and phrases such as “possibility,” “inauthenticity,” “transformation,” and even the word “distinction.” Landmark uses very existential philosophical concepts, some grounded in Zen Buddhism, that at times appear to be completely inscrutable. This is a direct inheritance from Werner Erhard and the “est” training, which established this philosophical foundation. Some of this does have the flavor of double-speak, which become clearer when you purchase a CD and have more time to listen to it. Be aware that if you attend the Forum, there will be times where you will have no idea what the Forum leader is talking about.
In this article, I can’t tell you exactly what Landmark actually teaches. I can’t tell you, not because it couldn’t be told — don’t believe the fiction that what the Forum teaches can’t be explained — but because it would be a violation of their copyrights, to which Landmark Education is entitled, and which I promised not to disclose. When I signed up, like everyone who signs up, I gave them my word that I would keep their “technology” confidential. Also, the Forum doesn’t directly allow you to take notes, so I wasn’t able to write down the details that I normally would when attending a workshop like this. If you do want an explanation — like I did before I came — Landmark does publish the Syllabus for the Forum on their own website.
Our particularly iteration of the Forum was led by Jerry Burkhard, a boyish and (then) 41 year old former hotel and restaurant manager who has been leading Forum workshops for about eight years. He’s never been married before, but he’s engaged to someone and couldn’t be happier about it, or so he says. The Forum gets off to a pretty slow start, and it’s clear that for long stretches of time, Burkhard is essentially reading out of a manual. Still, he tells us that we should not miss a minute of the presentation because it all builds on itself. So, while you can take bathroom breaks, don’t make them too long.
The intensity of the Forum is offset by long periods of tediousness and boredom where nothing at all seems to be happening for long stretches of time. Again, it takes the Forum quite a while to get going, and a lot of the first day is spent just being introduced to what the Forum is about to do for us. After the first day Burkhard told us that we had only done 5% of the forum; after the second day it was maybe 25%, and all the rest was to be done on the third day. A lot of the time in-between is spent on the Forum congratulating itself and the Forum Leader letting you know what other courses and workshops are available through Landmark Education.
The Forum demands of participants that they be “brutally honest” about themselves in identifying the ways that we “blame other people for the things we are dissatisfied with in our own lives.” Many of us have a searing need to make other people “wrong” and to defend our own need to be “right,” or so we are told. While this is not a unique insight, Burkhard was quite good in his ability to coax, to challenge, to redirect, and ultimately, to get people to drop pretenses that they have about themselves.Especially people eager to get to the microphone and to prove to everyone how much they were “getting it” already. These were the moments when the Forum came alive. These were the moments where the Forum became more interesting to sit through.
In these public sessions there were a few people who came to realize that not only were they not necessarily victimized by the other people in their lives, but that they themselves had been the cause of a small trail of destruction in which they had left several people devastated in their wake; others became clear about the degree to which they still cared for some relative or friend with whom they had essentially severed relations; others still could be seen struggling with the meaning of profound and dramatic events from their own personal histories. These insights led to the phone calls for which Landmark attendees are rightly famous, where they call some unsuspecting friend, relative or ex-lover to apologize for the “racket” they have been running on them and to take ownership of whatever story they had created about their history together. These phone calls often end with a declaration of love and a request for the recipient to join the caller at a forum event, often leaving the recipient of the phone call alternatively confused or profoundly moved. Or both.
Landmark makes a point of emphasizing that the Forum is “not therapy,” although it clearly is intended to produce therapeutic results. In practice it sometimes felt like a cross between an existentialism seminar and large scale cognitive group therapy. Part of the reason for insisting that the Forum is not therapy probably has to do with legal consequences; otherwise the Forum leaders, who are not therapists, would be “practicing therapy without a license.”
The Forum also promotes the notion of “integrity,” which means honoring your word and keeping whatever commitment you’ve made to somebody else. When it comes to repairing a relationship in which you’ve been blaming somebody else, the Forum encourages you to repair it right now, while you’re still in the Forum, while the Forum leaders can still “coach” you through the experience. The same thing holds true with respect to inviting others to come participate in the Forum. Enrolling others in Forum courses is an act that participants are very strongly encouraged to do now, while the Forum is still in progress. This, again, leads to those infamous telephone calls.
This brings me to my chief complaint with the Forum, and that has to do with the way it is marketed, or rather, the way it markets itself. The marketing involves “collapsing” whatever sense of transformation participants have experienced with selling the Forum to other potential participants. Landmark has chosen to market itself exclusively through word of mouth, especially by getting participants who are in the “heat of the moment” to recommend Landmark to someone else. It’s like a sales pitch at a time share presentation: get it while it’s hot! This clearly works much more effectively for them than advertising on television or in magazines. The Landmark Forum leaders will make the argument that if you’ve been “transformed” by your experience in the Forum, why wouldn’t you want others in your life to have that experience as well? Yeah, yeah, blah, blah, blah. It’s a hot sale. They know it’s a hot sale. It’s no accident that Werner Erhard, who created the operating principles, was a marketing wizard.
A good therapist, for example, may also “transform” the life of one of their patients, and yet the therapist doesn’t troll for clients in the middle of a therapy session. A good therapist doesn’t ask you to refer clients while you’re still a client.
Not only is there a hard sell for new recruits while you’re in the Forum, there is, of course, a hard sell for continuing the Landmark programs. At my Forum “graduation” about half the graduates enrolled in the $595 Advanced course ($795 if you don’t register in the first week after graduation), and many of them will presumably also enroll in the Self Expression and Leadership program, and thus complete the entire “Curriculum for Living.” That suggests that about half of the program participants felt sufficiently motivated to make it worth their while to enroll.
Like a good politician, the Forum stays relentlessly “on message.” All the Forum leaders have heard every possible objection to what they teach and every possible objection as to why you should not enroll your friends and family in the Forum today. They have well rehearsed answers to all of these objections.
The Forum leaders rarely stop for unplanned questions, but build the “momentum” of the Forum through a very carefully designed script in which they are often reading directly from a manual. They intersperse this script with personal stories and with the ubiquitous exercises in sharing that characterize the Forum experience. Much of that sharing is genuinely moving as one observes the participants alternately struggling and sometime succeeding with their own attempts at transformation. It also creates its own momentum, of course, as participants are directed to share the results of their actions and are coached by the Forum leader when either action has not been taken or action has not produced results. After all, if everyone else has gotten it, if everyone else has “popped like popcorn,” the rest of us think that we have not “popped” that somehow we have failed. If everyone else is taking action, registering their family, registering their friends, and registering themselves, those of us refusing to do so can feel like there must be something wrong with us. It is this relentless momentum coupled with the hard sell and the use of participants as the sales force for Landmark Education that can give the whole thing a cultish feel. Landmark is not a cult, in my opinion. But it sure is a hard sell.
I wouldn’t even begrudge them their hard sell but for one thing: it completely lacks integrity. For an organization where integrity is one of the core concepts that they preach, this end run around it feels completely hypocritical. In my view, they are simply not being completely honest about their intentions. That is not “acting with integrity” in my personal lexicography.
The Commitment Seminar
My commitment to the “Commitment Seminar” is flagging, and it’s only the third installment of a ten week course. Graduates of the Forum, it turns out, are all entitled to participate in a series of ten week seminars offered through Landmark Education. The first of these seminars is free. Other seminars are $100, and a few of these require, as a prerequisite, participation in an earlier seminar. Topics include such subjects as Commitment, Sex and Intimacy, Fitness, Money, Creativity, Relationships, Being Extraordinary, and a series on Producing Breakthrough Results. The seminar that my partner and I have chosen is the “Commitment” seminar, because it meets on Monday nights instead of Wednesday nights, and it’s pretty much the only one that she and I can attend together.
The Seminar series is run by Seminar Leaders. These folks are not as gifted as the Forum Leaders themselves, but are still extensively trained Landmark graduates who typically have done all of the advanced courses as well as a number (if not all) of the seminar series. Our guy is Brett. We get off to an rocky start with Brett because of a situation that arose at work: it turned out that I was supposed to be on a flight to Chicago that I thought I was not supposed to be on, but I didn’t find that out until three hours before the flight. It’s the same Monday as the date of the first Seminar, and we had been informed that we must attend the first one.
As instructed, I called Landmark to notify Brett, get him on the phone, and this leads to a circular discussion without any resolution. Brett suggests at one point that if I was really committed to the Seminar I would rebook the flight for Tuesday morning at 6:00 a.m., even though that would cost me almost as much as the Forum itself. A few more conversations with the Center Manager and the Participation Manager and Brett, and it’s agreed that I can continue with the Seminar even having missed the first session. In addition, I’m assigned to a group of about a half-dozen participants, each with a group leader. Everyone in the Seminar is assigned to these groups, in part as a way to help people keep their commitments.
Having finally worked out the details, I attend my Commitment Seminar and find myself to have, once again, a bifurcated reaction to what Landmark has to teach. On the one hand, what they teach can be powerful: in the Seminar, it is teaching about the power of giving and keeping your word. On the other hand, I’m put off, once again, by the blatant integration of marketing in the content of the course itself. In conversations with fellow participants, I find that many of them are put off by this as well.
But there is something else that is putting me off, and it has to do with what Landmark Brett is teaching in the Commitment Seminar. At the Seminar, we are introduced to the notion that we’re not actually committed to the things we say we’re committed to (okay, I’ll buy that) and that we instead devoted to all kinds of “hidden and undeclared commitments.” Commitments like wanting to do things our own way, to being mediocre, to proving that we’re not good enough (I’ll buy some of that). Underneath those commitments are even more cynical commitments, in what seems like a never-ending circle. It’s an onion, peeled layer by layer, that has no core. The participants are required to uncover these cynical commitments and share them with a partner. I’m having more and more trouble buying this. Are people really committed to mediocrity? Are they really committed to proving their not good enough? Or are their simply obstacles (insecurities, a lack of faith in ones self, the previous experience of failure) which inhibit the commitments we were intending to keep? The sense that I’m getting — and my partner is getting this same sense — is that Brett seems to be suggesting that our lives were a complete sham before we came to Landmark and that only Landmark can be our salvation. I’m not buying it anymore.
Finally, at the third session Brett says something which causes me to fall off the Landmark bandwagon entirely. What he says is this: those of us who are concerned about the way Landmark does its marketing (and apparently there are a number of us who have mentioned this to him) are all “committed to being resigned and cynical.” Say What? There is no causal nexus between objecting to how Landmark intertwines the marketing of their courses into the courses themselves and being committed to cynicism or resignation. The only thing I’m cynical about at the moment is Landmark’s way of marketing themselves.
I stopped attending my Commitment Seminar after that, even though I would occasionally hear from my Group Leader. She was really very nice, and encouraged me to keep coming. She kept reminding me that it was “my” seminar. She asked me to “try things on.” I tried, but they didn’t fit. Finally, to my surprise, after the Seminar was over, I heard from Brett again. He wanted to know why I stopped attending the Seminar. An unusually high number of people dropped out, and he’s concerned whether there was something that he’s been doing wrong. He’s not at fault, I don’t believe. He’s just toting the party line. It’s not what he said but how Landmark behaved that made me drop out of the Seminar. I can’t speak for why others dropped out. In any case, we have a longer conversation, over an hour, which is much more satisfying than any he and I have had before.
The Relationship CD
At some point after the Forum was over and before the Commitment Seminar had expired, I decided to purchase Relationships: Love, Intimacy & Freedom, a CD that was available at that time on the Landmark website. I wanted to get the CD for two reasons: first, I was curious as to what Landmark had to say about relationships, and second, I wanted to see what it would be like to listen to Landmark material away from the “hot ” we’re-at-a-timeshare-sales-pitch atmosphere that seemed to be part and parcel of any Landmark live event.
The CD is “hosted” by by Steve Zaffron and Nancy Zapolski, two senior leaders at the Forum. It is the audio recording of several sessions which they were conducting with a group of participants. You can hear both the leaders and various unnamed participants in a session which is typical of what happens at the Forum, only with a particular focus on relationships. Listening to the CD would give a someone a bit of a sense for what the Forum and other Landmark-sponsored workshops “feel” like.
I was interested to see what the folks at Landmark would reveal as the secret to being in relationship. The upshot, as much as I could discern one, was that the secret was “to be related.”
Okay.
Not Earth-shattering news exactly. What became clear to me as I could listen to the CD a few times is that there is a kind of “double speak” that pervades Landmark, that promises a big delivery but often doesn’t deliver all that much. At various points in the introductory Forum, the folks at Landmark promises not only to deliver to us things we didn’t know, but to deliver the things we didn’t even know we didn’t know. That’s an oversell. The Forum does deliver some interesting things, but not that much.
A Cautionary Tale
There is a cautionary tale for me in the experiences of one particular couple, this being the couple that had first suggested that my former partner and I attend the Landmark Forum. Again, this was a professional couple, both of them psychologists. They had put together a consulting business, where they were going to advise other people who were simultaneously in business and in a family situation. Husbands and wives in business together. Fathers and sons. Brothers with each other. The Demoulas brothers could have used their advice. They were also going to write a book for this same audience of people, and I even hooked them up with a power couple that I knew whom they would be able to interview. However, the book kept changing in size and grandiosity. From being in a defined niche, they wanted to start writing about leadership in general — which would have put them on a collision course with all the thousands of other “coaches” out there who are writing about leadership — instead of staying within their defined area of expertise. After much Sturm und Drang a book was finally written, by which time they had lost my friends as one of the interview subjects. In the end, it was much closer to its original intent after having wandered far afield.
So, I don’t know: maybe this couple never would have formed a consulting partnership and never would have written a book if they had not attended the Forum. But at some point it was clear that they had also been infected with the grandiosity of their own ideas. The Forum seemed to have imbibed them with the idea that anything was possible. But anything is not possible. Lots of things are possible, and some of them verge on the miraculous. But you can’t be running at a sprint all the time. If you run a marathon you have to run at a reasonable pace. Around the Forum, I had the distinct impression that people were encouraged to believe that they could run at a sprint all the time, that there were no limits to anyone’s possibilities. And that just isn’t so. Optimism is great, it’s inspiring, but optimism does need to be tempered with a little bit or realism. It’s the untempered belief that anything is possible that has led so many people down the rabbit hole of network marketing, or gave Bernie Madoff so many clients who should have known better.
Is the Forum Effective?
After attending the Forum and considering the question, I’m of a mixed mind as to how effective large group awareness trainings (LGATs) like the Forum really are. Clearly, they have something to offer, or they wouldn’t be as successful as they are. And Landmark Education is, to be sure, a very successful company. I do think that you can learn at least three things at the Forum:
– First, you can rewrite your own life story, especially if you’ve been using it as a justification for certain habits. If, for example, you believe that you can’t stay in a relationship because your parents had a nasty divorce, than the Forum is a place to rewrite that story. (It’s not true, by the way. That’s not why you can’t stay in a relationship).
– Second, I think you can learn about the power of taking action now. The Forum is very much directed to taking action immediately and without delay, and that’s clearly a good habit to get into.
– Third, and on a related note, you can learn a lot about keeping your word. The Forum is a little bit obsessive about making sure that everyone is keeping their word. That can also make some of us a little more cautious about giving our word, because not everything in our lives needs to be an iron-clad commitment.
On the other hand, there has been very little research done on the long-term effectiveness of large group awareness trainings. For one thing, groups like Landmark Education do not encourage independent research. They would rather just rely on their own testimonials. With the limited research that is available, what appears to be the case is that LGAT trainings can often given participants a powerful short-terms sense of belonging and of revelation. These programs can be very successful in breaking down longstanding defenses, in breaking through certain psychological barriers, and giving participants a sense of transformation. Of course, if you do have a breakdown, there isn’t necessarily anyone with the skill and attention to help you put yourself back together again. Some — although not many — participants in LGAT trainings have had psychotic breaks, occasionally leading to litigation. One notable distinction between traditional therapy and an LGAT, is that participating in an LGAT normally involves waiving any and all legal rights prior to participation, something which never happens in traditional therapy.
In addition, whether these positive phenomenon last is open to debate. Many participants, finding themselves bowled over by the power of the experience, sign up for a string of successor courses, often at a very substantial cost. Repetition can solidify the lessons learned at the initial training, of course, but old habits are hard to break. I’ve met many graduates of large group awareness trainings who don’t seem to be any more self-actualized than before they started. But then we never know what’s going on inside.
The flip side of that coin is the concern, actively expressed by many critics of large group awareness trainings, that these have much in common with cults. And there are certain disturbing commonalities. Many of them are 12 or 14 hour workshops that encourage a certain amount of sleep-deprivation. There tends to be a very active message relative to how wonderful or powerful the workshop is, with active encouragement to get participants to testify to the same. Many of these workshop are actively hostile to any kind of criticism and work hard to direct anyone who happens to go off-message. Many workshops propose that they are the only solution to your life, the only way that you can transform, the only thing that will make your life fulfilling. The Forum is certainly guilty of promoting this message.
I think my best advice to anyone considering the Forum or a similar large group awareness training is to try it if the idea appeals to them, but to go in with the resolution that you’re not going to sign up for additional courses immediately. Let the experience settle. Trust me when I tell you these opportunities will not disappear. If, three months from now, you’re still burning with desire to take a follow-up, then by all means go ahead and do it. Do it in the clear light of day, not at the peak of emotional arousal.
Some things, most things, I would say, even when thoroughly explained or pointed to or painstakingly described in as accurate detail as possible and as rationally and plausibly as possible and discussed forever are still never the things being discussed.
You can talk about the thing we call the “sun” and so called “sunlight” for a thousand years. your words will never be the sun nor an accurate complete summary of the world of the sun and sunlight. At best, everything you said was an opinion, your opinion and have almost nothing to do with the Landmark Forum whether you were being critical or gushing unabashedly about how great it was/is. Unless you include all of it, and by all of it I mean all of it, your opinions are distorted, biased and unreliable in my opinion.
Well said, Citizen Skeptic.
I’ve done both the est Training and the Landmark Forum plus a number of other courses from both. Your account strikes me as intelligent and fair. I too feel I got value out of est/Landmark but was put off by the relentless sell-sell-sell and the cultishness to it.
Ten years on, my take is that the est Training/Landmark Forum delivers a powerful, even shattering impact which causes participants to overvalue the experience, especially with the organization constantly encouraging them to do so.
For anyone curious what the est Training was like, I recommend “The Book of est” by Luke Rhinehart It was written with the cooperation of Werner Erhard and the est organization. Rhinehart presents a composite of several est Trainings and captures it all with accuracy and beauty.
Landmark people say the Forum is completely different from the Training, but it’s really not. The Forum is toned down considerably compared to the Training. The hours are not as long, you can go to the bathroom when you want, the assistants aren’t as robotic, and the emotional rollercoaster isn’t as extreme. The climax is basically the same, though the wording is different.
I would still recommend the Landmark Forum if someone asked. It’s a great value for the money and could be a creative whack to the side of the head. But I would also warn people that the later courses are an anticlimax and they had better learn to say, “No.”
This was fascinating. I’ve known several people who have gone through various stages of Landmark, and saw each of their seemingly miraculous transformations. But in each case, all of it fell apart within 12-24 months after they stopped Landmark, and they went back to being exactly who they were prior to Landmark. At least, that’s my opinion.
Yes,,,I agree with Gunmetal…I was enrolled many many years ago by my ex-husband and his family. And were all very exciting to hear while they “were in the conversation” but then as time progressed, the conversation went away…and today my ex is an alcoholic, pretty sick, and in denial about it…too sad.
I just hope that is clear that “conversation going away” means you falling back to the ordinary. To your old histories. Your becomes real with you enroll others. If you don’t practice and leave it at side at one point you loose you ability to master life. But the transformation itself, those 3 days. The distinctions that you get you will never forget. 1 year and half since I have taken the Forum. Top 3 best things I have ever done in my life. Just sharing my experience.
An outside observer.
Firstly, I would like to say that in my research of Landmark and my experiences with the same, the above is very well written, very definitive and non bias in my opinion.It pretty much covers what I and others have experienced over the years of this somewhat controversial form of education.
Well done and thank you.
After reading so many blogs ( both the good the, bad, and the very ugly) it seems that there is a lot of passion and resentment towards this institution and rightfully so as so much time and money has been devoted to the subject.
The legal Team at Landmark and the cost that they incur justifies the cost of the courses and the time that they require the paying customers to volunteer. The time that I see peope spend on this is astounding to say the least. Has anyone done the math on this. If they paid everyone who is essentially a student or a paying customer what the numbers would be. Millions and more per year. Does anybody that is dedicated understand the value of time. I am really struggling with the way that the customers defend Landmark concerning the amount of time spend dedicated to an institution that charges them a lot of money. Really the time spent doing clerical, set up, food services, marketing, answering phones, for me anyhow, is astounding. Some spend more time volunteering than they do at work making money. Ummmm, “What’s the matter here” Natilie Merchant.
After traveling the world for the past 15 years and living amongst many cultures I recently moved to a place that I will refer to Johnstown ( not to be confused with Jonestown where they did “drink the kool-aid). Easy now there big guy!!! Anyhow I came to this beloved place where my mother and father met. I came here to get sober and have not had a drink in nearly 2 years. Many people close to me who have known me for more than 50 years have recognized that I have indeed gone through a significant transformation.My life has never been better–“Oh but it could be so much better” ( as those who seemingly did drink the Kool-aid) say”. It has nothing to do with Landmark Education I tell you, in fact quite to the contrary albeit, I do see similar parallels in my program ( let’s just call it Bill W. town) to Landmark. I am not sure it is the education that the institution or those loyal members of Johnstown make it out to be. One compared the communication coarse to a Master degree in communication while others said it will change my life. Hummmm!!! really???? but why would I ?? Improve always but change. What if I like what I have achieved and still have the roaring ambition to do more, help others, love, build great things, leave lasting legacies ( Large Civil Engineering projects that will have a positive effect for generations to come) and give to those in need. To trust people before condemning them and giving everyone a fair shake. Having both the moral, (now spiritual) integrity and yes the Landmark definition of ” integrity” ( by getting others to drink the kool-aid) OR simply doing what you say you are going to do. I learned this in my late teens and early 20’s and still reinforcing the already broad integrity that was installed in me and my siblings genetically through my wonderful and loving parents.
Is this starting to sound like a blog???
Are you bored yet??? I am!!!
So now back to Johnstown. It seems that since I moved here everyone I have met is involved with Landmark and you guessed it, yes they are trying in every sneaky way then can to get me to transform my life through The Landmark Forum and make it “so much better”.
This type of sales pitch ( or sorry Landmark terms- “enrolling”) started within days of me landing in my beloved Johnstown. First it started a guy who I have, and still do respect as a brother (Jeff). Then it was a girlfriend ( Jane), then Janet and Jim. Get the drift!!!
This is my new home and the above mentioned ( who’s “names were changed to protect the innocent” ) I really like and respect. I lived with three of them and frequently have dinner parties, great conversation ( sometimes), Good people. Smart People. Generally happy and somewhat successful but nothing out of the ordinary. For the sake of reference let’s just call them “ordinary people”. Some are suffering well beyond recovery both financially and emotionally and one we will call “Jane” a graduate ( if there is such a thing in Landmark) of many advance courses with anger issues that I have rarely seen in my vast travels worldwide and living in more than 15 countries!!. The screams that came out of her mouth reminded me of when I took a suffering friend back to a mental hospital..SCARY!!! I have a lot of friends and come from a huge loving family. For this I am very grateful and even more grateful for after hearing and seeing the effects of LGAT’s as reference in the above Blog. I had a relationship ( lets call her Janet) as far back as in my 20’s and heard horror stories ( similar to that of Erhard’s allegations of a father raping his daughter and abandoning his own wife and young family ). I dated Jane for 5 years. She is indeed a survivor of the horrors that I once thought unthinkable. I love her to this day and am still in contact with her after some 35 years!!!. Don’t think she has done the Forum but not sure. All of the other “ordinary people” as mentioned have, and many others here in Johnstown. Some have dropped out. The only one I have met that is a “Landmartian” ( a term she coined, or at least to me) is a huge financial success and retired at 50m something and then went to Landmark. So here is a person (Jane) who has no kids few friends and more money that you and I will ever spend in a lifetime,Very Intelligent and simply does not need to work. And after living with her for a few months she is VERY angry at everything, and seeming not happy. I am in the middle of my transformation from being a drunk nice guy to being sober nice guy and Jane is verbally and physically abusive. Hold On– I am thinking….What’s the matter here” ….And I am still thinking…. what did I do to cause such anger??. Is this my fault??? Then I learned of her abusive childhood not only from her but from other’s. Out- a- here ( Jane’s house ) I thought ,Oh No,Red flags run!!!!! “Run Forest Run” I did. We are still friends. Not because of Landmark. I have not decided yet if Landmark had anything to do with our break up but a rational thinker would say absolutely not. In my experience Landmark fixes nothing in ones past. Only you can do that with some guidance to show you your path just as our mentors did and still do.Whether it be a good friend, a lover, Landmark,Bill W., or a brother. If you have made a change for the better and recognize that “there’s always room for improvement” ( My Quote as a real leader that has led many large international teams in building large Civil Engineering projects) in our lives and our action towards other’s then you did this yourself. It is hard to look in the mirror sometimes. Be strong, be honest with yourself, with others, be kind, love people, help those in need and expect nothing in return, lead by example. Integrity!!!! and be willing to change ” coachable” if you will ( I hate that F&^%Cing term now). For those of you who drank the Kool-aide. You see Landmark has a hidden agenda for preaching Integrity. Why????? The institution wants you to commit more to them. Forget everyone else. Some do, some don’t again ” ordinary people”. Then guess what they want you to get everyone else in your life to commit and so on and so on…….. and slowly 500.00 bucks at a time the money goes to the top. Werner Erhard ( ex Scientology) is rich and basically living in Exile and perhaps rightfully so. Does he have moral Integrity ???? We think not. Just saying. Perhaps that this is just my ” racket” love that one too BTW. A racket. Is it really a racket though?? or perhaps intuition. Landmark a definition of Hypocrisy, a breakdown in moral integrity and a brain washing scheme to prove to other’s Landmartians or (ordinary people) That you have integrity to them. Wher’s the beff I ask. I tell you it ain’t in the pockets of the ones that I know have been taking the courses for up to 20 years not financially or by Landmarks definition “doing what they said they would do”. Some of them claiming to one day have leadership skills superior to all of those who don’t take the coarse. Leadership, don’t get me started here. Pa lease!!!! One thing I know is that very few of these people have a clue about is leadership. I Think of great leaders are tose that lead by example. From the 10-15 people that took at least one coarse very few seemed to have any leadership skills. Nor do they do what they will do EXCEPT when it comes to Landmark and their respective constituents. The one thing they do have in common is that they speak in the Landamrk logo about commitments, promises. re-promises, integrity. restoring integrity, and leadership. To me people who possess these normal skills don’t need to use special lingo to advertise it ,It seems that these natural traits that most of us have do not need to be broadcast to everyone around them and wear sophomoric badges that say “Leader” on them. What a joke!!!. Another marketing scheme. Everyone in the room or group whether therapeutic or otherwise like in a crises situation like being trapped on an island can’t be the leader.
Landmark uses this leadership and commitment crap to market Landmark and it works.
I know that the “Leaders” do not make very much but someone does and the ones that drank the kool- aid can be easily spotted.
Leaders are not made in a classroom or LGAT from my experience. Leadership is done by actually taking the initiative or being elected to solve a problem, create or build something.
As an outside observer who has attended of the famous Tuesdsay “Special Evening” marketing scheme and the infamous “Home introductions” where most people just walk out, then they ( the Martians) corner you if you are one of the ones who expresses interest.Or just being a nice guy not wanting to hurt or embarrass anyone in the room. Never Again for me. I also have seen the long term effects Landmark has on people. Being committed more to Landmark then their family. Having integrity when it comes to Landmark. “Game in the world” and alienating close friends and family who do not join while mending relationships with others, which is good, but seems very superficial as the participants are highly encouraged to make that call to further increase their vulnerability to sign up for more classes in the heat of the moment and get others to do the same. ANYBODY can make that call. It’s all basic stuff. No big breakthroughs that I see. And I have been the recipient of many a such call. Good Humane stuff I have done it so many times I can’t even count. The point is that you don’t need Landmark to have integrity.
Good day
So why do they have so many people volunteer. People don’t have to. People want to be around people that have clear expression. I know when I assist I totally have no sleep. But yet I come back for me more. Interesting isn’t. People matter and they want to make difference. That is what I blame it on.
The very best thing I have done in my Life and will continue to share it with as many people as I can .
I have not done the Forum however I have been immersed in a culture of many friends and family ( including my fiancé) in the US that have and swear by it….Kinda!!!!. After traveling and working on very large infrastructure on overseas assignments as a Resident Engineer leading teams ( of more that a thousand) that really do great things and really do have a positive impact on virtually millions of people, I remain open to new ideas. I have always said. There’s always room for improvement”. And I stand by that.
Enough about me. I must say the script and description from what I know and have seen from those fully immersed in the Landmark culture of friends and family. And it is a culture. It’s dead accurate. some get obsessed with the program, some get the good material and use it. Some need it some don’t. Not sure where each of us fall but for now and as, I see it, it’s the latter. I am very happy in my life. Very happy. We have learned from the behaviors of human beings for years and learned how to create, invent and accomplish things by leading by example, teaching skills needed to accomplish things. Measurable things like the great Hoover Dam, the Brooklyn Bridge, The Pyramids and lest we forget Petra and Machu Picchu. All of which man created by taking action, envisioning and building what seemingly could be impossible. We put 2 men on the Moon. Again, by taking action!!!
And how we ask ourselves how did we do all of these great things without Landmark!!! Wow!!!. Could we have done them better. Who knows. Perhaps!!! From my visits to all of the above except the Moon and the Pyramids, I like and appreciate the accomplishments of humankind just the way they are.
Live in the now. Your future is now. Build it!!!